Welcome. Yes, my husband doesn’t want me to give away anymore Mandu to our friends because he wants to eat them all. I keep them in the freezer so he can cook them anytime he wants. He used to buy frozen pot-stickers but now he no longer has to shop for them. Not only that we are saving lots of money. ;)

I received the following in my email but was surprised that it didn’t post in Maangchi’s Forum? Maangchi was doing some recent site upgrades so maybe your post got caught in the midst of the change(?).

Anyway, I’ve pretty much been taking turns crying and being happy every time I see the devastation and then hearing of a life being saved in Japan. I feel for them…it’s too tragic what they are enduring.

Try not to take your sick kids to the doctor or hospital right now because there’s a “superbug” virus that’s been spreading and it doesn’t sound good at all. Hope your kids get better soon.

Making mandu the very first time seemed to take a long time for me, but now the 2nd batch went quite smoothly and quickly. I made some for the soup but mostly for steaming and frying. Oh and the 2nd batch of kimchee turned out so much better than the first as it fermented more to my taste. I don’t add the squid/oysters because they are not fresh here. Let me know how your scaber turns out. I’m going to grow them in our garden this season so I can try the recipe. :) The baby potato recipe looks good too so that’s going to be on our menu for tonight.

***************************************************

Reply by: mokpochica 3/22/2011 6:32PM

Text: Wow! I’m sure evacuating your home was very scary. I am glad all turned out well. The people of Japan have been very much on my mind. I have been looking at some of the stories about Indonesia 5 years after the 2004 earthquake and tsunami and I know that Japan will be just as successful rebuilding, if not more. Of course the loss of human life is the great tragedy.

Yum! You inspire me to try making mandu. I still haven’t made gochujeon! I need to get my act together. How did your kimchi turn out? Have you altered the recipe to your taste at all? I add a bit more sugar usually and I omit the squid/oysters.

Last weekend I made large portions of bibimbop namul and meat to eat throughout the week and it was great. I also made gaji namul and nabak kimchi (water kimchi). This past weekend was too hectic too make much panchan with sick children. I made roasted seaweed in the pan and beef radish soup. I also made doenjang chigae with a really spicy jalapeno, but it was delicious. I love it with enoki mushroom. I also made some rest stop potatoes from aeriskitchen.com/2011/02/rest-stop-gamja/#more-8969 They are my husband’s favorite rest stop food, so it brings back a lot of memories from our time traveling in Korea.

I plan to make mu saengchae, more roasted seaweed and the chwi namul this week. I am excited to see how that turns out. I don’t think that I’ve had it in Korea…that I remember. The dried aster scaber is cheaper than kosari, so I wanted to try them.

Attachments:

Yum! I posted about a week ago, but it didn’t go through for some reason. Anyway, your bulgogi looks great.

This week I have made the cooked radish side dish, soybean side dish, miyeok julgi bokkeum and spinach side dish (sigeumchi nameul). I also made sundubu chigae (quick and dirty style though–not a faithful rendition of the recipe here) and dubu kanjang jorim. I’ve been cooking quite a lot this week because I have been on spring break, but not all of it has been Korean food.

I made peep sushi and tons of vanilla extract so I can give it as Christmas gifts. The peep sushi was very cute and VERY sugary–it uses peeps, rice krispie treats and fruit by the foot. You can imagine the happy faces of my 3 little sugar fiends and my 13 year old niece. :)

Saturday, 4/9/2011: Ran out of kimchee so made some more today but this time tried 막김치 / Mak kimchi. One big head of cabbage fits nicely in this one big jar.

After watching the Shikhye Video, it looks like a lot of work? How long did that amount last you Kim? I'm going to try it anyway because the end result appears thirst-quenching. Aah, it brings back memories…I just told my husband if I were to ever visit Korea, I would try all the flavors of Korean food!

Christmas? Can't imagine thinking about THAT holiday now. Bet your kids and niece had a wonderful time. I used to love Rice Krispie Treats. :)

Attachments:

Yum! That mak kimchi looks delicious. My husband found 총각무 today at the Korean grocery store, so I guess I will be making chonggak kimchi this weekend. I thought I would be making 나박김치 again, but slight change in plans. 식혜 is really easy to make. Our family of 5 has been drinking it for three days–and that is with everyone drinking more than one serving a day. It is delicious. I bought more malt powder at the store today so I can make it again soon.

I was talking with my younger sister on the phone today and she told me that she had the best seafood pancake at a recent trip to a Korean restaurant and that inspired me to make 해물파전 today with maangchi’s recipe for yachaejeon. Mine didn’t spread thinly enough and so it wasn’t cooked exactly right, but it was still very good. My daughters loved it. I will try again tomorrow. I love 전 and bindaeddeok too. We’ve been having rainy and overcast weather lately in Michigan, so it fits the times.

You got 한글 stickers? That’s so wonderful. I have not memorized nor understand the Korean I read so Google is my friend.

The 해물파전 looks very appealing. I would love to see your photo of 나박김치 when you make it. I love those little things. Every summer I grow radishes, but this year I’m going to try to grow the little Asian radishes.

This morning I tried my hands at making Gyungdan. I used Maagnchi’s Recipe but didn’t make the black sesame coated ones. The Mugwort from a herbal online store was not the finest (I think it’s prepared for tea) but used it anyway, not bad. The best one was the Roasted Soy Bean Flour coated rice cakes. I already had 3 of them nice and warm and sweet! April 10, 2011

Attachments:

I bought the stickers from amazon and stuck them on my computer that the school issues all teachers (a Macbook). Hope they will peel off well when I have to give the computer back!

The 경단 looks fantastic! That is another one I have been wanting to try, but it looked time consuming. I have leftover frozen rice flour from making mujigae ddeok for my twins’ birthday and I was thinking of making the rice cake that has the same texture, but no food coloring and just has raisins added to it. I don’t know what it’s called, but I think it would be really easy to make. Basically the same as mujigae ddeok but without the trouble of making colored layers.

Weekending 4/17/11: Today is Friday, 4/15/11, and this is what I made…this was my second attempt at it and I filled them with double quantify of sweet red beans. The first batch I was conservative with the beans because I didn't want them to burst. I find that if you make the rice cake dough softer, it's more pliable and thus more accepting of larger qty. of bean paste..

Can you believe we used to buy commercially made pink and green rice cakes from an Asian store all these years? Now if I get hungry for them, I just whip out Maangchi's Rice Cake / 경단 / Gyungdan Recipe and make as many as I want. The texture is so chewy, gooey, and sweet—I love these things!

on 4/14/11 another batch of mak kimchi was made and it's fermenting. This time I used two head of cabbages so it made two big jars of kimchi. The 1-jar batch of kimchi from last week only lasted for 3 days (gave 3/4 of it to our friends) and it fermented perfectly. We also had Spinach side dish Sigeumchi namul (시금치나물) along with Bulgogi(불고기) and steamed rice.

Attachments:

Guess what weather is expected here tonight? SNOW! I hate snow in April. So, maybe I did send some rain to you, but you know what they say about payback. ;)

The soondubu looks yummy! Sometimes the best foods are created when you just throw something together. I love asparagus, but I never would have thought to put it in soondubu. And cod–also love it. We had soondubu this weekend too. I’ve decided that I don’t like the brand of fish sauce I’ve been using and I think that is why some of my recipes haven’t tasted like I want them to. I’ve been having this problem with miyuk gook too. So I bought the 3 crabs fish sauce today.

I really want gyungdan right now. Time to make it! I haven’t made my dduk yet. I kind of forgot about it. I have dried cherries now too, and I think that would taste awesome with it. I’ll have to get on it.

I made kamja jorim, spinach namul, mak kimchi, chonggak kimchi and roasted kim for sides this weekend. I also made kimchi chigae, miyuk gook, soondubu and kimchi jeon. I am jeon challenged. I haven’t quite got the batter right yet, but the taste is good. I’m still working on getting them crispy enough–when I was making seafood jeon it kept being too watery. I didn’t have that problem so much with kimchi jeon, but it still wasn’t crispy like I wanted. I will have to experiment more.

One of my daughters really loves cooking with me these days. She mostly made the spinach namul today and was so proud when her appa said that it tasted especially good today. My other daughter told me after that “I’m going to help you make kong namul Mama” Cute!

Welcome to Maangchi's Korean food and cooking forum

I made this forum for my readers to talk to each other, help each other, and make some new friends. Please share your experiences and photos of the Korean food you made, and help other members with their questions.